NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting mission is entering the “K2” phase of its life. The loss of reaction wheels and thus pointing stability mean that it couldn’t continue looking at the original Kepler field, but Kepler engineers have worked out that it can point to fields in the ecliptic by using the pressure of the Sun’s light to stablise the spacecraft.

Kepler’s transit of WASP-28b

In engineering observations to test his concept Kepler pointed at WASP-28b, a hot-Jupiter planet previously found by WASP-South. The lightcurve from a short test in Jan 2014 shows that Kepler is working well and can still detect planets.

Several more WASP planets, incuding WASP-47b, WASP-67b, WASP-75b and WASP-85b are in planned Kepler-2 fields, promising high-quality Kepler lightcurves to really nail down the masses and radii of these planets.